Final Act
by HalfASlug
Summary: Sequel to Act Two. A normal day turns everything on its head for Draco Malfoy as he is forced to accept his past and move forward.


_A/N: Hello! This is the sequel to one of my other one-shots called Act Two. It would probably be best to read that one first. Although you could try and read this one without it and be confused. Depends what kind of evening you're after I suppose._

_Disclaimer: J.K Rowling owns Harry Potter and thankfully had the wolves in her story get married and not brutally murdered at weddings. Because that would've been traumatic for everyone involved._

* * *

_This could be a movie_

_And this could be our final act_

_We don't need these happy endings_

-Drive, Funeral for a Friend

* * *

She had told him that she felt sorry for him.

That was how this had all started.

He'd never known her claim to feel anything for him before but she had said that she felt sorry for him. The first thing she had willing given him had been pity. It said everything, really.

Weeks later Draco knew it wasn't her words that had caused the current situation, but they had started the ball rolling. Every day since, they had passed through his mind at least once. It wasn't a switch, a flickering bulb, illuminating the side of his story that he'd never considered before. It was as if they had built a staircase that he had started to climb against his better judgment, her voice echoing along the walls as he went.

_"I know my darling father and I aren't exactly best friends."_

He hadn't wanted to know what was at the top. He had been happy at the bottom, ignorant and angry.

_"But I still see him all the time. I'd still be upset if anything happened to him."_

The anger had faded, hadn't it? At least if they're angry they still care. That was the saying. And he wasn't so he didn't. But Draco had been stupid little boy. He saw that now.

_"I mean, he died, Draco. He died and all you could do was hate everyone and sleep me with me after the funeral."_

The anger had still been there that day. The injustice of having an emotionally absent father had faded so it was almost nothing. No longer a towering inferno, but an ember. The change in intensity had tricked him into believing it was no longer there.

_"I don't believe you're the unfeeling monster you think you are half the time and pretend to be the rest."_

In retrospect he could see the quiet rage, clear as day. This was made certain in contrast to how he felt now.

_"It's just... It makes me sad. I feel sorry for you."_

Because what he felt now was an internal agony he hadn't known he was capable of.

He had been in Diagon Alley not twenty minutes ago. Just a quick trip to pick up some bits from the apothecary. Nothing life changing. If all had gone to plan then he would have been home within the hour and would have forgotten anything that happened there in another. The other shoppers with their blurred features and dull conversation had joined the familiar shop fronts and overcast sky in the background. No one bothered Draco as he strode down the cobbled street, cloak tight around him to shield him from the chill in the air, and he certainly had no intention of engaging them.

It was then he saw a flash of yellow and black in the corner of his eye. He turned to see it was in fact a Wimbourne Wasps scarf wrapped around the neck of a girl much too small for it so half of their face was covered by the wool. The child smiled at Draco, revealing a missing tooth and he looked away with disgust. It was all smiles now but the thing would probably bite him if he had got any closer.

As he continued down the alley, Draco remembered the small Wasps badge his father sometimes wore on his cloak, usually after they'd won a match. It was always suspiciously missing after a defeat. A brightly coloured scarf was far too tacky for him, but a badge was subtle enough that he could show he supported the best team in the league without appearing to boast. Draco smiled fondly at the memory. Of course it was there to boast. When did Lucius Malfoy ever do anything that didn't show how he was better than everyone else in the room?

It was something so small. _So_ small. He shouldn't have noticed really. He'd seen Wasps merchandise a million times since his father had passed away, but only today did he stop and take notice of what he was seeing.

And when he did he couldn't stop thinking about it. Even when he had reached the apothecary and the little girl was long gone, the image had remained burned into his retinas.

Never again would he see his father brag about his Quidditch team. Never again would he watch him smoothly change the conversation if it ever veered towards a bad transfer decision. In fact, he would never hear his father speak again. Or see him. Every memory he had, good or bad, was final. It was all he had of his father and it was all he ever would have.

Frozen outside the little shop, looking through the window but not seeing anything but a tiny pin badge, Draco tried to remember where the badge was now. Did his mother still have it at the manor? Was it one of the many possessions Draco had seen no point in holding onto and thrown it away? For first time since his death did Draco want to hold something that had once belonged to the man he had loved and respected and had grown to resent and despise, to remember the times before it had all fallen apart and neither of them had truly tried to fix it.

He wanted to know if his father remembered the badge and see his reaction to Draco bringing it up after all this time.

It was then that the reality of the situation hit Draco with the force of a stampede.

His father was dead.

Before he was so caught up in the melodrama that was his own headspace that he didn't give thought to what had actually happened. So long ago he had shut off the part of his head that cared about the man that he had forgotten, where the memories of his childhood were stored. In the eye of the storm he couldn't possibly have seen the whole picture. Now it was like looking back at a different person, someone Draco felt sorry for.

But the person _was _him. The hurt wasn't a fictional character's, but his own.

Horrified, Draco marched back to the Leaky Cauldron, his eyes burning and throat constricting. He was _not _about to start crying in public, least of all about this. The pub was within reach but nothing was stopping the onslaught of emotion building up inside of him. Someone he had never seen before called out to him, a look of concern on their pudgy face, but Draco couldn't stop walking or he thought he would collapse.

He Apparated with only one thought in his mind – he had to get to her.

Opening his stinging eyes, Draco saw he had somehow made it into the entry at the back of her block of flats unscathed. A drunk tramp slumped against a filthy skip blinked at him, apparently unused to seeing men appear from nowhere. Draco was gone before the man could say a word. When he reached the front door he punched the buzzer continuously until he heard her voice coming out of the ridiculous Muggle machine attached to the wall.

"Who the fuck is this and where's the fire?"

"Astoria, it's me," he bit out, hoping she couldn't hear the strain in his voice.

"Oh, Prince Charming!" she exclaimed sarcastically. "Who else do I know with such impeccable manners?"

Draco slapped his hand against the wall in frustration. "Just open the door!"

"Not if you're-"

"Just open the fucking door!"

He hadn't meant to shout but he was struggling to breathe now. It was no longer a question of stopping a full-on breakdown, but holding it back for as long as possible.

There was silence from her end and Draco thought he had blown it. Hopelessness shot through him as he felt the world close in around him. Panting and shaking, he stared out at the dismal Muggle estate she had for some unknown reason had decided to live in, and realised he had nowhere else to go but home.

The fear of being by himself had just started to take hold when he heard the rough buzzing noise that signalled the door being unlocked. He spun around, bolted through the door and sprinted up the stairs two at a time.

He had been coming here for casual sex that had slowly started feeling less casual every time for nearly a year now. They weren't in any way official or attached. He was perfectly at liberty to see other women, but he wasn't. Not because he couldn't, but because he didn't particularly want to. For all he knew, Astoria could be seeing a different man every night but he never asked. What could he do? He had no claim over her. Sometimes he was tempted to ask her, but the possible answers scared the shit out of him.

She'd spot that he cared about it and know why he was so bothered even if he hadn't really settled on an answer himself. She always knew.

As it always was, the door was already unlocked for him. Draco slammed the door closed behind him in his haste to find her. The flat was tiny. Already, just by standing in the front of the door, he could see she wasn't in the living room or kitchen. Of course her personality and essence was everywhere, from the Muggle musicians she had pictures of on her wall, not because she liked them, but because her parents despised them, to the almost clinical cleanliness of the place. No mess meant no weakness was revealed.

"Someone's eager," he heard her voice call from the short hallway that lead to her bedroom and bathroom. "Not everyone would appreciate you barging in like-" The moment she stepped out of her room, dressed in tight jeans and low cut vest, her face fell. Draco briefly wondered if she ever looked anything less than fucking gorgeous.

"Draco, what's wrong?" she asked him, slowly crossing the room towards him.

He swallowed, unable to form words.

"Draco-"

"Nothing." His voice was so rough that Draco doubted he would have recognised it had he not been there.

Astoria raised an eyebrow. "Well, that was convincing."

"Just…" Draco breathed, looking anywhere but directly at her. "Just – come here."

She laughed at him, causing Draco to glare at her. "I'm not something that can be summoned when you're bored, sweetheart."

Something about the endearment said in such a flippant manner made Draco's heart hurt and his stomach sick. Every visit here had his emotions spinning out of control and he was hardly in a good place when he walked through the door.

"It's-" Draco ran his hands through his hair. How was he meant to explain this when all of his concentration was focussed on not crumbling? He chanced a glance at her and saw that she had let her hard exterior down enough to show him a hint of concern.

_"I feel sorry for you."_

"I've – I've just realised my father is dead."

Astoria stared at him blankly. He didn't blame her. The words made no sense in his head, even less out of it, but that was basically what had happened. The truth and all its implications had come rushing in at once.

"Just?" she replied slowly. "We met at the _funeral_, Draco. I don't understand-"

"Neither do I!" he roared. He threw his cloak off and into the corner of the room, not caring about appearing rude. "I hated the bastard! I still do! I-I just…" He choked up again and threw himself into the nearest armchair, head in hands. "I didn't care," he whispered. "He died and I honestly didn't care."

He heard her sit down on the sofa on the other side of the glass coffee table and squeezed his eyes shut, hoping it would help.

"But like you said – you hated him," Astoria said in that tone of indifference that she always used when discussing his problems. He had thought it meant that she didn't care, but he found bouncing his thoughts off an apparent blank space helped him see things clearer. "And if you hated him, then why would you care?"

Draco lifted his head to scowl at her. "A man died," he spat.

"You've seen death before." She shrugged. "Caused it a few times as well."

He tried to not visibly show how the mentions of his previous crimes affected him as he glowered at her. The look on her face told him she wasn't remotely fooled. "This should've been different," he muttered, rubbing his forehead, hoping to alleviate the pressure building there.

Draco stiffly sat back in the chair, his hand resting on the hard arm, hoping to pass it off as nonchalant. She couldn't know how tense his muscles felt or how icy his blood ran in that moment. Unbidden, a lump began to rise in his throat and he tried to swallow it. It was no good though; she had spotted his jaw tensing and the shine in his grey eyes and moved towards him. He turned away, coughing and blinking rapidly. He wouldn't cry in front of her. He hated this feeling, of almost drowning in the memories he had tried to repress. He just wanted it gone.

It wasn't welcome. It wasn't understood. It wasn't happening.

He could sense her kneeling in front of him and closed his eyes again.

"I thought you'd know better than to hide things from me by now," she said softly. Her hand was resting on his knee. The warmth of it anchored him in the moment but did nothing else to help.

"Not hiding." His voice was choked, only his pride was holding him back now.

"You're always hiding. Your dad is dead and you're sad about this. All you're hiding is the fact that you're human."

All of his answers were stuck in his windpipe, none of them able to break through and convince her otherwise. It was all he could do to stop breaking down, to force back explanations about how he still hated the bastard, that he didn't want him back in his life and that he didn't know what he was feeling… He felt her soft fingertips press into his shaking cheek and turn his head to face her. By this point he accepted that it was going to happen; he wasn't even sure why he was still fighting it. He opened his eyes and found his vision was blurring.

"From what little you have told me, I think you did the right thing at the time," she said with a look that told she knew that was the line he was fishing for. Well, almost. "Your relationship was toxic. You got out of there. So what if was a parent? The idea of family is outdated," she finished with disdain.

Draco nodded as her fingers moved to soothe his scalp. The pragmatic voice in his head had been saying this for weeks, yet he didn't believe the words until they were hers.

With an uncharacteristic sigh, she answered the plea that he tried to keep out of his eyes. "But of course, you aren't worried about that. There's another question. A question so painful you have avoided asking it for nearly a year. A question of regret."

No one could read him so unflinchingly. When had he come to depend on her like this? She was every good day he had had in almost twelve months. It was like nothing he had ever known.

"If you had known you had two years left with your father, would you have still made the same choice?"

"I don't know." His voice was barely audible but she was close enough to hear.

"You never will," she whispered sadly. "It was what happened. The choice you made is the one you must live with."

The words sank in and all Draco knew was he was sick of pushing people away and the loneliness it ended in. He hated the silence of his flat. He hated his choices, their consequences and the what ifs he would never see.

But if he was going to make one more choice and live with it, there was no doubt in his mind what it would be.

"This isn't you," Astoria said, unclasping his robes and slowly pulling them down his arms. "This isn't Draco mourning Lucius. This is a little boy crying because he daddy wasn't who he thought he was and now he never will be again."

"I'm not-"

But his voice died and finally a tear fell. He could feel it slip down his cheek but nothing else felt real. She was right, after all. He had lost his father during the war, when what happened had changed them both until they couldn't stand each other. As a child, Draco had believed his father was the greatest man alive who could do anything and would always be there for him. In his teens he had watched the illusion fade to black as he watched a man, fresh from a prison sentence fall to pieces and live in denial. Draco had worked his entire life to be as good a man as his father, but joining the Death Eaters had shown him what a false idol he had been. The sense of betrayal he felt had been his grief.

He had thought that they would never reconcile, that the gap between them could never be bridged. Today he had learnt that, deep down, he had been counting on it happening one day and had been too proud to admit it. Maybe not completely, but enough to be civil to one another. Now that it never would, Draco had lost the possibility of awkward family dinners, terribly impersonal Christmas presents and strained conversations that he had thought he would have. His bereavement had been his future.

Astoria was watching him, waiting for him to absorb her words and find understanding in them. Her ability to read people was unnerving most of the time, but the way she saw through whatever act he put on meant he was almost forced to be himself around her. The scandal and whispers that followed his family meant nothing to her, only the person she saw before her. Apparently who she saw in him was very different to the person he saw in the mirror. She seemed to enjoy his company.

It was almost as if she had received the sign she had been anticipating, as her expression reverted back to mask she usually wore.

"I must admit, this is the most delayed reaction I have ever seen," she said, smirking a little. "It's been a year."

"Eleven months and three weeks," Draco corrected in a broken whisper.

And then her lips were on his, slowly sliding across them, gradually making the mess in his head stop screaming and make sense. His hands moved to grip her sides, the fabric of her vest balled up in his fists. He may have still been crying, but Draco didn't know anymore; she couldn't see if he was and that was all that mattered.

Her hands were gripping the back of his head and for once he didn't mind her screwing up his hair because everything about it was healing him in ways potions couldn't dream of. Nothing else mattered to him providing that her tongue continued to caress his like this, that he didn't have to open his eyes to reality for as long as humanly possible…

A gust of cold air hit his back as Astoria started pulling his shirt higher up his back and something registered within him; he didn't want to fuck her or sleep with her or whatever it was he was meant to call what they did every other time he had come here. He pulled back and her jagged breath froze the moisture on his lips, almost making him regret his decision to stop.

His eyes, still burning from earlier, flickered open and saw her giving him a questioning look. For once, he had her confused. For once, he had the upper-hand and, for the first time, he didn't care. He wasn't scared to give her anything that she could destroy with a simple change of expression. Revealing a weak spot to her was no longer the worst thing that could happen to him.

"I'm in love with you," he breathed.

His words were barely out of his mouth before he saw their effect. Astoria's eyes widened and her red lips parted so that he could see her perfect teeth. This was the first time since they had met that Draco had known her look shocked or unsure and, even though his heart was drumming against his ribs, he had never felt calmer in her presence.

Without warning, Draco was shoved back in the chair and being straddled. His hands had only just managed to bury themselves in her hair when her mouth had clamped onto his and was kissing him like she had been waiting for this. Even though it still felt like the world was collapsing in on him, he could sense her insecurities and fears, things he honestly thought she didn't possess.

Barely stopping for breath, let alone to finish what had been a serious conversation, Astoria roughly undid the buttons of his shirt and Draco realised how selfish he had been, using her to soothe the burns that marred his soul while assuming everything was fine with her. A confident and sarcastic shell hiding the demons that lurked underneath – it all sounded very familiar. For so long he had been so alone, alternating between burying the hurt and lashing out, that he thought it was oddly comforting to know someone else understood what it was like.

Even stranger than that though, was Draco wanting to find out what her ills were, not so he could capitalise on them and take advantage, but because he wanted to return the favour. This uncompromising dragon of a girl was possibly a bird with a broken wing putting on an impressive show. He just hadn't seen her in the right light until now.

Astoria pulled back, breathless. The two locked eyes and it was like every secret between them had been laid bare, even though they both knew they were both liars and cheats with more skeletons than was normal for ones so young. Draco tried to think of something to say, to tell her how he felt, to show how grateful he was, but nothing could sum it up more than the look in her eyes. So startled by the realisation that maybe he had already been helping her this whole time, he hadn't noticed her tears.

It wasn't like she bawling or anything, but even that single track of mascara down her cheek was enough to show him what all of this meant to her. He reached up to wipe her cheeks but she batted his hand away.

"Not a fucking word," she choked, before attacking his mouth once more.

And Draco let her because he now understood that he wasn't unsaveable. He wasn't an enigma of indifference and resentment. He wasn't even a tragic anti-hero. He was a boy who had been forced to make choices he had wanted to walk away from, and walked from the choices he should have made.

Now he was a man who had to make a life on top of those rocky foundations and he was determined to have this woman at his side as he built it into the fucking clouds.

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_Thank you for reading!_


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